Pan Wanyu, "Investor Network"

VIPSHOP, February 25thAccording to its unaudited financial report for the fourth quarter of 2020, VIPSHOP had net income of 35.8 billion yuan ($5.5 billion) in the fourth quarter. In addition, according to the full-year data, VIPSHOP's net income in 2020 was 101.9 billion yuan (US $15.6 billion), an increase of 9.5% compared with 93 billion yuan in 2019, and the net profit belonging to VIPSHOP shareholders in 2020 was 5.9 billion yuan (US $905 million). An increase of 47.1% compared with 4 billion yuan in 2019.

Although VIPSHOP handed over a fairly good report card, he has not been very calm in the past year or so.

Has been investigated again and again for unfair competition.

One wave after another, recently, Guangzhou VIPSHOP Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "VIPSHOP", VIPS.US) received a penalty decision from the General Administration of Market Supervision.

On February 8, the General Administration of Market Supervision decided to impose an administrative penalty of 3 million yuan on VIPSHOP in accordance with the law. Prior to this, the General Administration of Market Supervision has received reports and filed an investigation into VIPSHOP's suspected acts of unfair competition in accordance with the law.

The punishment was announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on October 26th, 2020 when the professional purchasing agency wholesale platform "only purchasing" infringed upon the rights and interests of users, and on December 30th of the same year, the Market Regulatory Administration punished VIPSHOP for rice cookers and apples in the goods on sale in the "Singles Day" activity.Notebook computer, Bosideng down jacket, L'Or é al day cream + night cream and other 7 cases of goods have improper price behavior, only a few months.

It is reported that from August to December 2020, in order to gain competitive advantage and trading opportunities, VIPSHOP developed and used a patrol system to obtain the information of brand operators who were sold on the shelves of the company and other companies at the same time. By using the technical means provided by supplier platform system, intelligent networking engine, operation platform, etc., by influencing user selection and current restriction, shielding, commodity removal and other ways. Reduce the consumer attention, flow and transaction opportunities of brand operators.

The General Administration of Market Supervision believes that VIPSHOP's move restricts the sales channels of brand operators, hinders and destroys the normal operation of network products and services legally provided by brand operators and other operators, violates the principles of voluntariness, equality, fairness, and good faith, disturbs the market order of fair competition, and violates Article 12 of the Anti-unfair Competition Law of the people's Republic of China.

The sale of counterfeit goods has been exposed all the time.

It is worth noting that VIPSHOP platform is also constantly exposed the sale of fake events.

"Investor Network" browses SinaBlack cat under the flagComplaint platformIt was found that a number of complaints about counterfeiting of luxury goods were related to VIPSHOP, including Gucci brand belts, Pandora necklaces and so on.

Similar incidents have occurred in VIPSHOP before. On January 2, 2020, Beijing Consumer Association tested 60 cashmere samples and found that 11 cashmere samples did not meet the standard requirements. Among them, the Beijing Consumer Association found in the inspection that the sample of Lu Huangyang hooded sweater purchased from VIPSHOP used wool as cashmere and was suspected of fraud.

Why is the company frequently exposed to the sale of fake products? What progress has been made in the self-examination of the brands involved? In this regard, "Investor Network" wrote to Shen Ya, chairman of the company, and Hong Xiaobo, vice chairman of the company, but did not receive a reply from each other.

The special sale mode encounters the "ceiling".

Do these frequent acts of unfair competition and infringing upon the rights and interests of consumers imply that VIPSHOP's special selling model, which relies on his family to get rich, is losing its advantage day by day?

"Investor Network" browses VIPSHOP's perfect diary.The special sale found that some brands did not offer a big discount at the fair. The best-selling 12-color animal eye shadow disc of perfect Diary sells for 119 yuan at Vipshop, while the exclusive benefit of perfect Diary Tmall's flagship store costs 119 yuan for an eye shadow disc plus lipstick. As a consumer, you can have more lipstick at the same price, and you will definitely choose the latter.

Coincidentally, there is a special sale of Japanese brand skin care products Colette in Weipin meeting. the price of its three-piece set of hydrating cream and cream is 299 yuan, while the price of Tmall's overseas stores is 289 yuan, which is 10 yuan cheaper.

In fact, many consumers can get lower prices by looking for overseas purchasing agents.

Does this mean that the price advantage of VIPSHOP's brand discount model is gone? There are no industry barriers to the special sale model, and many platforms can be copied directly. Coupled with Kuaishou, Douyin live broadcast and brand Tmall flagship store live broadcast with discounts, it is likely to accelerate the decline of this special sale model in the market competition.

In response, Cui Lili, director of the e-commerce research institute of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told Investor Network, "judging from the development of the epidemic, online and cost-effective products should have advantages in channels and prices. But,According to the law of continuous iterative innovation of the Internet industry model, there is a ceiling on the traffic and revenue scale that can be tapped by a business model. "

Against the backdrop of growing content and social ecommerce, integrated platform ecommerce may be looking for change, such as:JingDong、AliThey have launched their own forms of social e-commerce, and they are not willing to lag behind in terms of live streaming and other content. And constantly derive more related products and services around the transaction ecology to do the "second curve".

At present, VIPSHOP seems to have no action tendency in this respect, and the development momentum of social e-commerce "Love inventory", which is similar to Weipin's customer group, is also very fast. The above reasons and so on may be the underlying reasons why we see the situation it shows at present. " Cui Lili added.

In addition, Cui Lili also said, "in terms of the number of SKU (a SKU in chain retail stores, translated into Chinese as' minimum inventory unit'), it is incomparable with big platforms such as Tmall and JD.com. VIPSHOP's original advantage mainly lies in brand discount goods, but at present, in many live sales events, the price of brand products will be more advantageous, more gifts, and may also be diverted to some extent. Cause the customer stickiness to decrease. In other words, the product price advantage is decreasing, and the customer base is not as sticky as social e-commerce. But in addition to the category expansion, did not see VIPSHOP have a new business line or business model out. "

However, industry insiders Ms. Zeng said, "VIPSHOP takes the brand discount route, and the category is not as comprehensive as that of Tmall and JD.com. Consumers may not be able to buy the products they want on the VIPSHOP platform. In addition, due to the emergence of Douyin Kuaishou live streaming, the performance of many traditional e-commerce will decline, and VIPSHOP's performance is OK."

In the face of the loss of the price advantage in the brand special sale in the high-end market, there is no room for it to play in the sinking market. With pinduoduoWith the rise of the group buying model and the close follow of Ali and JD.com, there is little room left for VIPSHOP to sink the market.

In recent years, VIPSHOP once developed the offline store model in order to find a way out. Although VIPSHOP has laid out VIPSHOP's brick-and-mortar stores in many cities across the country, some consumers in Zhihu think that the products in their existing stores are out of date, ordinary in category, price and style, and are not very attractive.

Cui Lili believes that, "there are too many uncontrollable factors for VIPSHOP to move to the front, such as offline location, product selection, operation and expansion mode, and so on." I once saw VIPSHOP's offline store in a shopping mall in Shanghai, but it didn't take long to close down. From this, at least it can be inferred that online store location, VIPSHOP may not have some more mature strategies, may also increase some trial and error costs. " (produced by thinking Finance)